This level of attention to this small detail helps us know for sure that our work is completed to the highest standard with no guessing that could lead to failures down the line.' he said. We even go as far as requiring all fasteners we touch to be marked with a paint marker once they have been sufficiently torqued. 'We have a policy of torquing nearly every fastener we touch. Beyer's response highlighted a great deal of importance attached to torquing fasteners correctly in his line of work.

The first thing I wanted to establish was the importance of torquing fasteners in each of the mechanic's roles. The responses also highlighted one or two interesting points the bike industry could maybe take something from. It was clear that there were some common themes running through the answers which is probably to be expected from professional mechanics who do this day in and day out for a living and who all work to a high standard.

The ramifications of a component failure on a bike, car or plane however can obviously all be catastrophic. This is possibly because bikes, in the overall scheme of things, are somehow seen as less serious when compared to cars or planes. One of these hunches is that even though torquing fasteners on bike components is widely regarded as good practice, it's not seen as essential and therefore isn't enforced as stringently compared to other sectors. I had a few preconceived ideas that I wanted to ask them about, as well as questions the mechanic in me just wanted to know out of sheer curiosity. Every day is a school day, as the saying goes, and I have always been interested in how things are done in other industries compared to the bike world when it comes to torque and torque wrenches. To that end, I've spoken with two professional bike mechanics, an aircraft technician and an automotive mechanic to see how things are done in their industries, in order to create an interesting comparison on working with torque. As a qualified mechanic, I have spent years torquing fasteners (a fastener is used to hold objects together, on a bike these will usually be threaded, with the thread used to secure components to one another i.e a screw or bolt) on bike components to spec and looking up and learning component torque ratings to ensure customers' bikes were maintained to spec and to minimise the risk of damage.

System mechanic professional lifetime